On the smallest guests.

The first child to lose patience at a wedding is usually about four. They have been excellent for the ceremony, dignified through the group photographs, and politely curious during the drinks reception. By the time the meal sits down, they are quietly disintegrating. Their parents are about to spend the next hour pretending nothing is happening.

I love kids at weddings. The photographs I take of them are some of my favourites in any year — the cousins in the corridor, the little flower girl asleep on a chair, the older brother who has appointed himself in charge of the toy basket. But if you want children present and happy and not turning their parents into part-time crisis managers, you need to plan for them. It is not difficult. It is mostly cheap. Here is the version I'd write for anyone asking.

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01The 4pm wall

Almost every child under nine hits a wall at roughly the same point of a wedding day. Around four in the afternoon. They have been in their good clothes since ten in the morning, they have eaten something rich at lunch, they are over-stimulated, and the meal is still an hour away. The wall is real and it is predictable.

If you plan for the wall, you can prevent most of the trouble. If you don't, you spend the speeches watching parents quietly negotiate with their five-year-old in the back row.

02What works

In rising order of cost — and falling order of how much most couples need to do:

• A small bag at each child's place. Crayons, a colouring book, a sticker sheet, a small puzzle. Costs about three pounds. Buys you forty minutes of meal-table peace. The single highest-ROI move at a wedding.
• A dedicated kids' table, near but not next to the parents. They feel grown-up. The parents get to have an actual conversation. The photographs of the kids' table are usually wonderful.
• A children's menu — chicken, plain pasta, anything that isn't a tasting plate. Adults will eat the tasting plate. Children will refuse it and you'll be parenting through three courses.
• A separate room with a film after the speeches, if the venue has one. The parents come back to the dancing. The kids fall asleep on cushions. Everyone wins.
• A babysitter on site for the whole evening. The expensive option, but the difference between parents who spend the band-set with one eye on the door, and parents who genuinely come back to the dance floor.

"The four-pound colouring bag at the place setting is the highest-ROI move you can make at a wedding. I have never seen one not work."Diana Nesbitt · Shine Pics

03What you don't need

Wedding entertainers — the magicians, balloon artists, face painters — are a category where the brochure looks better than the reality. I have photographed perhaps thirty weddings with paid kids' entertainers and they were uniformly fine and almost never essential. The colouring bag and the kids' table did most of the work; the entertainer arrived at four, did forty minutes, left at quarter to five.

If your venue is the kind of place that benefits from one — a long marquee evening, fifteen children, an outdoor space — then by all means. Otherwise, save the £200 and put it on the bar tab.

04The babysitter conversation

The single most useful thing I have ever seen a couple do is hire a babysitter for the whole evening, brief her at the rehearsal, and tell parents at the meal that she's in the side room from seven o'clock. Not a kids' club. A trusted adult who knows where everyone is.

If your venue can recommend one, that is the simplest path. If not, a parent in your circle will almost always know someone. The cost is shared informally between the families who use her, or absorbed by you if you want to make it a gift. Either way: the parents who come back to the dance floor at nine are genuinely there, and the photographs from that point of the evening look different.

…what the photographs look like

The single most-asked-for photograph by parents, in any wedding album we ever produce, is their child at the wedding. Not posed. The candid one. The little flower girl peering around a doorway. The four-year-old asleep across two chairs at half-eleven. The cousins all sitting on the wall.

If you set the day up so the children are happy, those photographs happen on their own. If you don't, they don't, and the photographs of your nieces and nephews look slightly tense in a way you'll see for years.

If you'd like to talk through specifics — the venue you've chosen, the number of children, the babysitter question — the contact form takes a minute. Diana answers these directly.

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